Dear 12pm
My breath ate half of the day, and I’d have rather had nothing at all.
Excuse my tongue, she misplaced her gratitude at the mailbox.
You know my rejection mails are now skinwalkers, I open them up
and the sad bodies of suicide notes tumble over my retina.
Yet I’m the one falling. And you, you sit by the window side with a white sun.
Irony is poking her nose below your feet
so the worn out carpet doesn’t get stained
with laughter as I read out “dear pacella,
we regret to inform you…”
I bury the editor in my mouth,
I curse you before my breath catches itself.
Another poet shares his rejection mail on WhatsApp
with humor wrapped around its caption, but we both know
there’s a shovel behind the editor’s neck.
You stretch your hand to hold the black river in my eyes,
and the bad time freezes for a minute.
Gratitude crawls into my skin, gives me a second to taste my breath.
I swear it’s been one half of a bitter day.
Honesty of Lies
you smuggle your old skin into the dark.
another party is booming at a closet in gwarimpa
so you must renew these cuts a day, or two, perhaps, if
a stranger swears that your company tastes like comfort,
buys your red lie, and sucks your nipples till taste
loses hold of their tongue.
this time, you will say your mother became a cloud
on the dawn of your first breath. and your father,
saturated with blood, dropped your placenta in
the delivery room, and you at God’s foot rug.
only yesterday was your mother supreme:
she made your father black. his hands a bed for chains.
he bled into the green of your parlor’s sofa.
and the stranger who looked like him lifted your lie
with buildup in his eyes, and pants,
that he spent the night moaning mourning
your father’s grief with the face of an orgasm.
when night broke, you were given a finger.
he might have guessed his sympathy would cement this emptiness
to wholeness. or this hunger into bounty.
stupid father lookalike. on your way out of Gado Nasko way
the bolt driver places appreciation on your thighs.
he drops you off with a sea in his pants, fondles the
notes, your breasts a bit, and leaves you with a change
you did not own. nature and its temple
for boobie-worshiping. after all, do you not walk in a body
you do not own? you walk, past the jam floating
into the club’s ears, into act. in this skin, you walk
to master potency: orbit its glory round gazes
until a bidder catches your signal. today’s stranger
escorts you into the silence of her husband’s aging camry,
but when she whispers i’m alone you open the pot of lies
hidden inside your throat & find reality instead.
all that you do, tongue folded into confession,
is whisper i’m alone too.
Pacella Chukwuma-Eke is the author of Love in its Bliss and Sins, the first runner-up for the Nigerian Prize for Teen Authors (Poetry Category), and “The Apocalypse.” She is the winner of the Utopia Award (Poetry Category), SODF, Cradle Poetry Contest, HCAF Creative Writing Award for Excellence, and others. She is currently a consecutive slam-champion, a Sundress Best of the Nets Nominee, and a two-time Pushcart Nominee. Pacella has her works published in several literary magazines including Eunoia, Roughcut press, Strange Horizons, Lolwe, Poetry columnnnd, and others. She is currently working as an Assistant Editor for the Arts Lounge Magazine.
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